Loving You From Afar

Chapter 1: The Kind of Silence

If someone watched my story, they probably wouldn't notice where things started changing, because nothing actually happened. It just got quieter.

The classroom had red tiles that never really looked clean no matter how often they were mopped. The door was brown, and near the small glass rectangle in the middle there was a thin red line running across it. It was just enough to see who was outside, or who was looking in. Most of the time, no one was.

Aditya had been in that school long enough to stop paying attention to things like that. The same walls, the same benches, the same people. Most of them had been there since second grade, long enough to decide who mattered and who didn't.

He had three friends, and that was enough.

They didn't sit together because they planned to. It just happened every day without anyone saying anything. Aarav usually started talking first, Siddharth followed, and Ishaan somehow turned everything into something more interesting than it actually was.

Aditya just listened and drew.

He always had a notebook open in front of him. It started as random sketches, things he didn't think too much about, but slowly it became something else. Ishaan began giving names to the characters, Aarav added dialogues that didn't always make sense but made them laugh, and Siddharth pointed out everything that looked wrong. Aditya didn't mind. He just kept drawing.

Inside that notebook, things worked differently. The main character didn't get ignored or pushed aside. He didn't have to think before speaking or wonder if he was saying the wrong thing. He just existed, and that was enough.

"Make him stronger," Ishaan said, leaning closer to the page.

"He already is," Aditya replied without looking up.

Aarav laughed. "Then why does he look like he's about to lose?"

Siddharth glanced at the sketch and said, "Because Aditya's drawing him."

They all laughed, and Aditya laughed too, even though he didn't change anything on the page.

"Give him some power," Aarav said after a moment.

"He doesn't need one," Aditya replied.

"Then what's the point?"

Aditya paused for a second, then shrugged. "Maybe he just doesn't lose."

Siddharth let out a small laugh. "That's not realistic."

Aditya didn't respond to that. He just continued drawing, pressing the pencil a little harder than before without realizing it.

The bell rang and the classroom filled with noise again. Chairs moved, bags zipped, voices overlapped, and everything returned to how it always was. Aditya closed the notebook carefully, like it mattered more than it should.

"Bring it tomorrow," Ishaan said. "We'll finish it."

Aditya nodded.

He believed that.

At that moment, there wasn't a reason not to.